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234 Stover followed him. The white mustang saw them coming, and set off into the timber on a feeble run.

The course of the pursued creature was around the northern approach to San Antonio and then toward the Medina River. Many times they thought to give up the chase, but then the white mustang seemed so near and so ready to drop that they kept on until the river bank was gained. Here the mustang disappeared into a pine brake; and it may be as well to add, right here, that neither the Radburys nor Poke Stover ever saw him again.

"Where is he?" asked Dan, a few minutes after the animal had disappeared. "Do you think he leaped into the water?"

"I heard a splash," answered the old frontiersman. "There it goes again." He tried to pierce the darkness with his eyes. "There is something over yonder, that—Whoopee, Dan, look!"

There was no need for Poke Stover to call the boy's attention to what was on the other side of the Medina, for Dan was already looking, "with all eyes," as the saying is. He had made out a number of Mexican cavalrymen, moving up and down along the west bank, and now he noted two pieces of artillery, which the cannoneers were trying to run out on two rafts moored close at hand.